Op-Ed: Gun Violence — The Media’s Focus on Problems, Not Solutions and How We Make Change

The publication below is an original opinion piece written by Hope and Heal Fund. It is the second article written for our Addressing Gun Violence series produced in partnership with SCG. If you would like to contribute an opinion piece to share with our network, please email eddy@socalgrantmakers.org. 

Today, the national media lives by the “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality, especially when it comes to gun violence. The higher the body count, the more the media is interested in covering the story for days to weeks at a time. During these periods of mass shooting coverage, the media fixates on the national discussion of new gun laws and wonders what Congress can and should do. Then they always move on.

This cycle of “rinse, lather, repeat” leaves out the needed discussion on the actual drivers of gun violence and the solutions needed to end this crisis. The media’s mass casualty focus reinforces the false notion that gun violence is episodic and inevitable. However, the truth is that gun violence is a chronic and preventable condition. 

Damaging Narratives & Mischaracterizations

The Hope and Heal Fund funded a study by the Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG), which analyzed California print media and found that six in ten speakers interviewed for stories on community violence were law enforcement. At the same time, only 33% were victims of violence or community leaders. In articles on community gun violence, images of people accused of gun violence were overwhelmingly men of color (85%), furthering the negative stereotype of Black and Brown men as criminals and perpetrators. In stark contrast, white people — predominantly men — appeared in photos associated with articles about community violence and guns, primarily as representatives of the criminal justice system (73%) rather than victims or perpetrators of violence. This data shows that even when media outlets focus on street and community gun violence locally, it often furthers harmful narratives.

Moreover, only 1% of gun deaths result from mass shootings, while the other 99% of firearm deaths in the U.S. are primarily the result of firearm suicides, street violence, and intimate partner violence. However, mass casualty events occupy a large part of the national news. Media outlets largely fail to address firearm suicide (one out of every two gun deaths in California) or intimate partner violence involving firearms. The BMSG analysis found that very few articles addressed solutions for these two drivers of firearm deaths. This absence further exacerbates the myth that firearm suicide, or suicide in general, is inevitable for someone in crisis and that they’ll find another way to kill themselves, even if a gun is unavailable. Death and coercion from firearms in domestic violence situations and the solutions available are also severely underreported and rarely amplified.

BMSG also found that only one in three articles on gun violence referenced solutions. When solutions did appear, the focus was often on changes to the policies and practices of specific institutions, many of which referenced the need for more funding for law enforcement. Community-initiated solutions that are based on prevention, intervention, and healing from trauma are rarely mentioned in the news about gun violence, appearing in only 5% of articles about community violence and guns, 3% of articles about domestic violence and guns, and only 2% of articles about suicide and guns. Furthermore, only 8% of all gun violence articles included language that evoked optimism about possibly ending or even reducing gun violence in California.

Centering Community Voices

Where are the solutions? Where’s the hope? The good news is that many effective and ground-breaking local strategies and community-based solutions are being implemented in communities across California that address gun violence prevention, intervention, and trauma aftercare. While it is encouraging to see some of these stories about local solutions receiving coverage, the narrative around effective local solutions is often hijacked. We are seeing more and more headlines and storylines that characterize some of these solutions as handouts for perpetrators or “Cash for Criminals.” Furthermore, community violence is still primarily covered as a crime digest, and some media outlets quickly dismiss or mischaracterize local solutions. 

But we are optimistic that community leaders across our state can change historically harmful narratives in the media. Hope and Heal Fund is committed to expanding our investments in local storytelling and increasing the capacity and media skill sets of communities so they have the necessary tools to tell their own stories and amplify solutions in their own words. For example, we recently launched the first of its kind Spanish Language Media Toolkit in partnership with Everytown for Gun Safety, which will be a crucial resource for community leaders, advocates, and others to report incidents of gun violence accurately. 

Other solutions to address narrative and storytelling strategies include:

• Intentionally creating news about gun violence prevention

• Contributing local opinion pieces that talk concretely about context and community-based solutions and that humanize local residents

• Preparing and sharing compelling story elements that illustrate hope, solutions, and prevention 

• Elevating race and equity issues as they relate to gun violence

• Increasing capacity within community-based prevention organizations with cross-sectional learning so the community leaders are trained on how best to build long-term relationships with journalists and media outlets

The Path Forward

Hope and Heal Fund is now entering the later stages of our media narrative change project with BMSG. The credible messages gathered over the past few years have now been tested. Now, BMSG is formulating a message training guide for communities that will be unveiled later this year, along with community training(s) on utilizing these messages. We understand that the messages that resonate most within communities come from credible messengers, often meaning the community itself. Simultaneously, we are discussing how we help communities expand their media skill sets and increase their capacity to tell their stories. Many communities already have local strategies that work, but their work is often buried and underfunded, and this critical work needs to be amplified. 

If you would like to learn more about addressing gun violence, we invite you to read Part 1 of our Gun Violence Blog series in partnership with SCG, view the Hope and Heal Fund website, or contact them directly at abarron@hopeandhealfund.org.